Biography

Ukraine-born Kseniia Polstiankina Barrad is a pianist and collaborator with a flourishing career on both sides of the Atlantic. She is a full music staff member at San Francisco Opera and a guest assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. She has collaborated with conductors such as Bertrand de Billy, Eun Sun Kim, Nathalie Stutzmann, James Gaffigan, Nicola Luisotti, Henrik Nánási,  Ramón Tebar and others. 

As a collaborative pianist, Kseniia has worked with opera and vocal music organizations across the U.S., including the Ravinia Steans Music Institute, Des Moines Metro Opera, Long Beach Opera, Cincinnati Song Initiative, West Edge Opera, Queen City Opera, Songfest, Lieder Alive and others. As a teacher, she has been hired for coaching residencies at the Adler and Lindemann Young Artist Programs, Indiana University, and several other Universities. 

Before deciding to pursue a career as a collaborative pianist, she won top prizes at international piano and chamber music competitions, including the International Competition for Young Pianists (Belgrade, Serbia), the Sergei Taneyev International Chamber Ensemble Competition (Kaluga, Russia), first prize in the LaGrange Symphony Orchestra Competition and was a national finalist two times in the MTNA Young Artist Competition, winning 3rd prize in 2011. 

Kseniia graduated with her master’s degree in Collaborative Piano from the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati, where she also completed her DMA in Piano Performance studying with Awadagin Pratt. She completed three years of the Adler fellowship at San Francisco Opera as well as a summer at the Merola Opera Program.